Slashdot Mirror
The $200 Billion Broadband Rip-Off
Jamie noted that Cringley has a piece about the US Broadband situation. He talks about where we were and where we are: 'not very fast, not very cheap Internet service that is hurting our ability to compete economically with the rest of the world' and about the $200B the phone companies got to make it that way.
It still costs a lot of money to string fiber up to every residence. Competition could, theoretically, actually impede development of such a network, since they're so expensive to build that you're only going to build it if you have a reasonable expectation of recouping you investment.
Not only that, but it's horribly inefficient for us to build multiple networks. There should be one physical network, and competition should exist on it.
The problem is that in most of the country (Everywhere non-Verizon), this network isn't being built. And in Verizon territory, there is no competition allowed. Worse, in some areas, inferior technology is being installed (FTTN, etc..) that will actually delay the possibility of anything but 7ish Mbit ADSL. Even worse, we paid for the fiber network, but we don't actually have it.
What is needed? We need some politicians with ethics who aren't in the pocket of the telcos to actually stand up and hold them to their promises. Either that, or we need the physical network to be a public utility. The former would be best for everybody, but it hardly seems likely... Everybody up the chain from the local town governments on up to the senate and even the executive branch is used to receiving their cut of what are essentially bribes from last-mile carriers (unscrutinized regressive taxes on citizens, really, funneled through telcos and cable-cos into local treasuries and national campaigns), and nobody is going to give the money back unless the voters hold them accountable. Most of the voters don't even know what's going on.
Let's see... about 24% of my income goes to federal & state (no local) income and payroll taxes... and, my best back-of-the-envelope guess is that I pay another 1%-2% in gas taxes, my car tab, and other user fees. (I own no property.) Yes, I'd happily pay half of my income to live in a country where we really had all of that stuff. Many Americans react just like you did when I say that, because the government is so ineffective here that they can't believe it would actually work. But there are a number of countries where it does, most notably a few of those evil European welfare states.
Obviously, competent management and fiscal discipline are necessary for such a state to succeed. Ultimately, those are political problems and are the responsibility of the people. Ask yourself why certain other countries have them and the U.S. doesn't. I think you will find the answer has to do with how people are educated.